Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Second Treatise of Government, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature, War, and Civil Society
Consent of the Governed and the Role of Government
Power and Absolute Monarchies
The Dissolution of Government
Summary
Analysis
The legislative power has the right to direct the force that preserves the common-wealth, and those laws must be constantly enforced. It takes very little time to make a law, Locke states, so there is no need for the legislative power to always be in session. The same power that makes the laws should not be the same power that enforces the laws, Locke argues. If the same body makes and enforces the laws, they may believe this exempts them from obedience. Thus, it is best for the good of the common-wealth if the power to execute laws is placed in another body entirely—the executive power. As laws must continually be enforced, the executive power must always be in session, unlike the legislative power.
This again points to absolute monarchies, in which the king is both the legislative power and the executive power. Not only can the king pick and choose which laws to enact based on his own desires, he can also pick and choose which law he follows or enforces, since he is charge of punishment. There is absolutely no oversight in such a monarchy, which is automatically created when the power to make and enforce laws is placed in two separate bodies of power.
Themes
A third power must also exist within the common-wealth, Locke maintains. There must be a power concerned with war and peace with other common-wealths. This power may be called the federative, Locke says, although it should be understood that he cares very little what it is called. The key to this body of power, as in the executive and legislative, is that the power it possesses is given to it by the people of the common-wealth.
Even though Locke’s book is a work of political theory, he still infuses it with irony and sarcasm, as he does here in claiming he doesn’t care what the reader calls the federative power. This also implies that he does care what people call the legislative and executive powers, which implies issues intrinsic to the common-wealth take priority over foreign issues outside the common-wealth.
Themes
Literary Devices
